This contribution to ancient history is a useful companion to Prof. Sayce’s “Ancient Empires of the East,” recently published by the same house. It is the work of one of the most noted of English scholars, and he has brought all the latest researches to bear on the study of the two great empires of Egypt and Babylonia, with whom the Jewish people had most to do. The method of Prof. Rawlinson is to make the Biblical references to these two mighty nations the text or foundation of his studies; and then to turn on the somewhat obscure and contradictory accounts of the Sacred Records the fulness of light brought out of archæological and linguistic research. The result is very happy, and the Biblical student of the Old Testament will find in this book a guide of the greatest value in clearly grasping the accounts of the Biblical writers. THE HUNDRED GREATEST MEN: PORTRAITS OF THE HUNDRED GREATEST MEN IN HISTORY, REPRODUCED FROM FINE AND RARE STEEL-ENGRAVINGS, WITH GENERAL INTRODUCTION BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON; AND TO BOOK I. BY MATTHEW ARNOLD; TO BOOK II. BY H. TAINE; TO BOOK III. BY PROF. MAX MÜLLER AND ERNEST RENAN; TO BOOK IV. BY PRESIDENT NOAH PORTER; TO BOOK V. BY VERY REV. DEAN STANLEY; TO BOOK VI. BY PROF. H. HELMHOLTZ; TO BOOK VII. BY J. A. FROUDE; AND TO BOOK VIII. BY PROF. JOHN FISKE. New York: _D. Appleton & Co._ The editor of this collection of pen portraits of the hundred greatest men, informs us that the project is one side of an attempt to view the history of the world as natural history. In this way he conceives biography as the physiology of history just as archæology is its anatomy. With this thought in mind Dr. William Wood has been for fifteen years a collector of engraved portraits and antiquities regarding them as historic documents. Out of this mass of material he has given us the illustrations of the book, which consist of the portraits of the great men, the primates of their race, while to illustrate the portraits we have short, and, it need hardly be said, meagre accounts of the men themselves, with a brief tabulation of their work, and a condensed estimate of their place in the world’s progress. The principal literary value of the book, we think, is to be found in the prefaces or introductions to each department, with the general introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. All of these are written in a scholarly and able style, and will be read with as much or even more interest than the biographical sketches themselves. After all, we fancy the value of the work to most readers will be accepted as pertaining to the portraits, which are reproduced in a very artistic manner from old and rare engravings. These are of great interest. In the biographical statements nothing but the barest outline, not quite as much, in fact, as may be found in our best cyclopædias, is attempted. The book is very handsomely printed and